Housing and Regeneration Bill

I speak in support of the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith and also on my amendment to insert the words, "““from time to time determine requirements””." I shall deal with that technical matter first. In using those words, I am using predecessor legislation rather than the very technical use of the word ““directions”” and the fact that you must comply with directions. The points that the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, made are of course entirely right. I suppose that they are dealt with pretty clearly in Clause 127(4), which says that a charity must distinguish in its accounts, "““matters relating to its social housing activities, and … other matters””." It is clearly necessary for there to be a distinction drawn in the accounts. My problem with the regulator doing it on his own is that it is a handover from the Housing Corporation, which was on both sides of the matter. That is an effect of the de-merger. It understood about the matters of substance relating to social housing, as well as doing the regulation, and therefore understood the matter of the accounts. The regulator will have no such need to have that understanding of accounts for the regulator’s own purpose; he is unlikely to be in any way expert in the matter of accounts and how they should be prepared. It is also the case that the social providers will go through an audit with an auditor, who will be pretty clear about how the accounts should be drawn up. This is not a situation in which directions are appropriate. You must comply with directions, which must be drawn up very carefully and in great detail. On this occasion, that would not give flexibility to the auditing accountant, to the Comptroller and Auditor-General, who might have some comments to make, or to the Treasury, which might have some comments to make. Therefore it would be better to stay with the words of the previous legislation, which say, "““from time to time determine requirements””."